Afghan election officials likely to declare partial results on Saturday

In the votes counted so far, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah are leading the polls.

KABUL: Elections officials said on Friday that 80 per cent of ballot papers have arrived in the capital from some provinces and partial results are likely to be declared on Saturday.

In Kabul, ballot papers from all districts have reached provincial headquarters. And 84 per cent of the result sheets have arrived at the central office in Kabul, said Independent Election Commission (IEC) spokesperson Noor Muhammad Noor.

"Result sheets have arrived from 13 provinces to the IEC head office. Only three provinces remain, due to their small percentage that is also in the process of transfer" Noor said at a news conference, Tolo television reported.

He was quoted as saying that suspect ballot boxes had been quarantined, and will be opened in the presence of observers and media representatives following vote fraud in the polling.

The country’s Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) says it has received about 3000 complaints about poll fraud and a probe is underway.

The IEC will announce the preliminary election results on April 24 and the final results on May 14.

According to the election commission, nearly seven million, including 35 per cent women, out of the 13 million eligible voters had cast votes in the April 5 landmark election in spite of serious security challenges. Afghanistan’s total population is an estimated 30 million.

Two potential presidential hopefuls, Dr Ashraf Ghani and Dr Abdullah Abdullah, claim to lead in the votes counted thus far. Zalami Rasoul, who was earlier also thought to be among the front-runners, is seen far behind the vote count so far.

Rasoul, who had served as Foreign Minister and National Security Adviser to President Karzazi, was considered to be his choice.